Jet Lag

I settled into an antiseptic, oddly smelling airplane seat in Portland at 10:20 am and landed in Mumbai at 12:20am the next next morning. Having spent most of the 25 transit hours sleeping, aided by the generous gin and tonics, I was dazed and confused as I navigated immigration and baggage claim. Date of my arrival? 12^th of December, or was it the 13^th now? Date of departure? Three weeks from now, or was it two? Destinations within India – I couldn’t seem to remember the itinerary. I knew I had something exciting, something life changing ahead of me, I just couldn’t quite remember what.

True Colors

I have lost so many things because of this illness. I lost a job I could have loved, I lost a man I thought I could have loved forever, I lost part of my health, I lost some of my dreams, and I lost my innocence. I gained things, as well, but the last two years of my life will be remembered as years of loss and growth. I hate that those two often go together.

Our Faults

I believe that we can be loved for, not in spite of, some of our deepest faults. One's flaws, the fundamental difficulties in one's personality that one grapples with all of his or her life, can actually be embraced by their loved ones (or maybe its just the struggle that is embraced). I love people for their tempers, their stubbornness, their loudness, their insistence, the pain they have endured.

When you're bipolar, your personality (or something) comes with a distinct set of faults. I am obsessive, angry, paranoid, high energy, hyper excited, furious, and delusional a few days about every month. For a few days each month I am sad, angry, have no noticeable sense of self worth, am clingy, and am sure that no one likes me. I can't blame this all on my illness. There are no doubt bipolar people more pleasant than I. But the consistent inconsistency, the cycles, are part of my disease, and they are confusing, scary, and difficult to those around me.

I live in constant fear of the people I love walking away. I live in constant fear that one day, that which was too much for me for several years will become too much for them. I live in constant fear that they will start to believe, as I sometimes do, that they can find someone to love who has all my good qualities and not this cyclic demon. And, I live in constant fear that these fears stem not from my illness, but from something core and dirty in my personality from which I can never escape. Not that that matters, as my illness in in fact something core and dirty that I cannot escape from.

I do not believe that people can love me for my illness, and that makes it exceedingly difficult to believe that anyone can love me at all. I believe that if someone is to love me, he will need to love me so much that he can somehow overlook this accident of biology, circumstance, and temperament. He will need to love me so much that I can express and share my volatile moods, my struggles with medication, my ambiguity about my past, present, and future. He will need to love me in spite of, and in spite of what: An elephant, a tiger, a poison.

Makes dating tough.

Disclosure

Recently, a colleague of mine decided to disclose her mental illness. Unlike me, she did so in an explosive and public fashion. I applaud the idea of disclosure in almost every context, and I understand intimately what a difficult decision and process it can be. However, her disclosure offends and deeply saddens me.

Which Like Two Spirits

In the past year, I've discovered two things that I think are passions in my life.

Just This

I thought long and hard about what to write about this, but there is very little that the video doesn't say. I wanted to quote a portion of it but I empathize and relate with almost every word. So don't read this. Read this.

Liar, Liar

Having bipolar disorder has made me a wonderful liar. There are so many little lies I tell every single day. What's that medicine? Oh, it's the end of a course of antibiotics. What doctor's appointment? This one's tricky - physical therapy is a great excuse. Why aren't you drinking tonight? Most recently, most poignantly: Why do you want to be a doctor?

$20 a Pill

Due to a variety of insurance adventures, I recently discovered that the cost of one of my mood stabilizing (and arguable life saving) medications without insurance is approximately $20/day. I'm not going to write a post about insurance companies or patent laws or Obama's health care plan because I don't think I have anything particularly new to say about them. I just want to say that $20/pill sucks.

Ironically, yet striking an all too familiar tone, the people who do have to pay these exorbitant prices are those who are especially unable to afford it. What if you don't have health insurance that covers name-brand drugs at an affordable price? What if you didn't realize you had a mental illness before a psychiatric emergency and don't have coverage at all? What if you're homeless, walked into an ER, and emerged with this prescription with no idea how to pay for it? What if you just made a bad decision about your insurance plan?

These are the what ifs that keep me up at night. They make me think about public health legislation and patent law. I don't have any answers and I don't even know if anyone is to blame here (I believe that free markets promote innovation and that we wouldn't have these drugs if someone couldn't charge $20 per pill, at least for awhile). I don't even know what the right questions are, but I hope people smarter than me are working on them because $20 a pill is too much. Especially when you depend on the pill keeps you alive, keeps you sane, and keeps you functional. Especially when you're already facing insurmountable challenges and this pill could help point you toward a halfway house, not prison, or a job, not poverty. Especially then.

Modern Love

Maybe this post is part 2 of 2 with my previous post, because it deals with similar subject. As I've thought about the pros and cons of sharing my stories, it's started to dawn upon me that they aren't my stories alone: they are our stories. I own my life and many things have happened exclusively to me, but many things have also happened, because of me, to other people.

Our Stories

Writing this blog has been a tremendous experience for me. I've found an outlet to process and express complex and evolving feelings and I've been touched beyond expression by the response from friends, colleagues, and strangers who emphathize and sympathize with the comments I post here.

As I've received positive feedback about my writing, I've started to think about other projects. There is a whole genre of topics that I can't write about in this forum, particularly related to relationships, that I could share in other formats: short stories, newspaper articles, maybe a book. Why not spend more time writing, both improving my craft and building something worth sharing more broadly? Last week, I remembered why not.

Meditation and Mania

Recently, I've been meditating on planes. The ~80 minute flight I've been taking is the perfect opportunity to enjoy a quiet, seated meditation and I've enjoyed having that time built into my day. Yesterday, I was experiencing some hypomanic symptoms while I tried to meditate and the results were quite interesting.

Maybe This Time

Apologies for the delay in posting - there has been a lot going on in my life, related to bipolar symptoms and otherwise, and I feel like I'm in a bit of a craeative black hole. However, I thought I'd pull together a post about some recent events.

One of the worst things about this illness is regretting actions I took and choices I made before diagnosis and treatment. To an outsider, I was a healthy and even highly functional human being but to those I allowed close to me I was a mess. My decisions were driven by fear: fear of something that I couldn't identify (until later, when it happened and a cruelly honest part of me was relieved to finally understand what it was I had been trying to avoid for all this time). I clung to people I thought could protect me and I pushed away those I thought might bring me closer to the edge. These were often the same people.

Health Insurance (sort of)

Earlier this week I came across a very interesting article in the New York Times about Sallie Mae's newest financial product, tuition refunds. These policies refund a student's tuition if the child gets so sick that he or she has to withdraw from school. It refunds your tuition 100% if the child has a physical illness and 75% if the illness is mental.

Running Downhill

This weekend, I partcipated in a 5-mile coastal trail run. It began with a 1,000 foot climb over the first mile and a half. It was slow going at first, but armed with my 90s music playlist and drawing in the positive energy of the runners around me, I clambered up the mountain and the downhill came soon enough.

I've dealt with enough personal crises that I actually thrive in moments of intense physical or emotional crisis - when someone is sick or injured, or when we're under a particularly brutal deadline at work, or when I'm running 1,000 feet uphill, I'm at my best. I know where my reserves are, I know that pain is only pain, and I'm learning, through meditation and life experience, that almost everything will pass. The problem for me comes when I'm running downhill.

Next time I'll be braver

Over the last week, I've shared a lot of changes happening in my life with those close to me: my upcoming move, change in career, and changes in living situations. The fnalization and fast arrival of these changes is starting to cause me a little bit of stress - where am I going to live in a few weeks? Am I going to be successful on my new career path? Why am I leaving behind something so good? I'm also in a blessed spot with my illness; while it affects everything I do, I am managing it through medication, lifestyle choices, and love. By the grace of God, the universe, my family, lithium, and sheer, beautiful, shimmering luck, I am in this blessed spot.

Meditation

It's been a long time since my last post, mostly because I went on a 10 day silent meditation retreat. The experience was transformational and much needed. During my ten days there, I learned a lot about how little I am able to trust my self and yet, on the other hand, I gained a great deal of trust in my ability to cope and handle difficult situations.

Building Character

Lately, I've had a lot of opportunities to build character. I actually feel my character getting taller, adding inches in the right places and toning her physique.

I build character when I set limits on the access that unsupportive people have to me. I build character when I emotionally disengage from people, however loving, who cause me stress and cause my symptoms to be exacerbated. I built character last night when I told my good friend that I had to go home and go to bed because I needed some down time. I build character when I run through my depression, through my mania, when I run like the act of putting one foot in front of the other is my new lifeline. Over the last few weeks, I've built character by getting up in the morning and going to work. I've built character by letting each hour follow the previous one, without disaster.

Two years ago, the last month would have put me into crisis mode. I've had a very intense and long lasting (for me) hypomanic period and then a crushing depression. There's a lot of change, and consequently stress, on the horizon, which makes my typically narrow bipolar tightrope shrink to thread-like proportions. But I survived. My psyche didn't disappear behind her symptoms, my body didn't get sick or shut down, and my mind remained focused and cognizant enough to complete the tasks needed to keep me moving forward. I kept moving forward, and now I feel, for the first time in a month, that a fog has cleared, that I am happy but not too happy, that I am tired but not too tired, that tomorrow will be a little bit easier than today. Two years ago, I fell apart, but today, I survived. I built character.

I'm currently reading "An Unquiet Mind," and it is having an unbelievable impact on me that I'm not yet prepared to discuss. I'd like to highlight one passage, though, that sums up my current sentiments, with that bit of humor I try to inject into these conversations: "[This was] character building, no doubt, but I was beginning to tire of all the opportunities to build character at the expense of peace, predictability, and a normal life". After a tough month of training, I think my character could use a taper.

What Prescription?

Every month, I pay $35 for three prescriptions for pills that make my life better. I have been going to the same pharmacy for the same three prescriptions since September, and there are three pharmacists who work there. I'm not asking that they remember me, but I would have expected better than the following.

Sweet Dreams

We tend to like things that we're good at, and I've always been good at sleeping. I fall asleep on airplanes before takeoff and wake up as we touch down. When I get emotionally overwhelmed, I get tired. When I faced my first real professional disappointment about a year ago, I overcame it by sleeping 10-12 hours a night for a week. Sleep hits me like a ton of bricks when other things in life are getting me down and I'm always grateful to seek solace in its chubby, lazy arms.

Last night, I slept for 10 hours, passing out fully clothed on my bed at 8:30pm and waking up groggy at 6:30, dozing for another hour. Today, I felt so sad and depressed at work that I took two small breaks to cry, for no apparent reason, in the bathroom. I felt overwhelmed by the smallest of problems and had dark, scary thoughts. Looking back, my desperate need for sleep was a harbinger of my depression, an indicator of the switch from one mood cycle to another.

Sleep is one of the most reliable predictors of my moods, and one of the best ways I have to regulate them on my own. Last week, I slept an average of six hours a night, and this week I will average ten and crave more. Inexplicable, during both weeks, I will be tired most of the time. I'm staying up tonight because I know that if I limit my sleep, I'll feel more awake tomorrow, that adrenaline will kick in and help avoid those bathroom breakdowns. This is arguably not the best long term strategy, but it's tremendously effective.

I Can't Read

FIRST, some boring housekeeping matters:

1) I'm not sure if my RSS feed works, but I know that if you subscribe via email, you'll get an email everytime I post. So I encourage you to do that if you want to follow me - it's quick, easy, and unobstrusive.
2) I appreciate the comments, emails, etc. that both help me improve the blog and motivate me to continue writing - so if you read and appreciate this effort I'd love to hear from you.

One of the themes I've noticed as I look back over my blog is acceptance. How and when does one accept, and even embrace, her mental illness? When is acceptance giving up and when is it the ultimate victory? When is it a crucial step in recovery and when is it a paralyzing blow?
I've been thinking about a simple question: If I could go back in time and undo my bipolar disorder, would I?

Run Run Run

Two nights ago, I decided to make a dramatic life change in the next three weeks. I was so certain it would work out and I knew I would make the right decision and I just knew and everything inside of me knew and it was so exciting and the world was so exciting and et cetera and et cetera. Hypomania was terrifying, a voice inside my head pushing me over the edge, to places I wouldn't normally go, lurking in broad daylight with theories and beliefs and worldviews quite unlike those I hold in a less manic state. Thankfully, I recognized that I was hypomanic. I feel sad, reflective, and angry when I have to censor myself in these moments, as though part of me will always be Peter Pan, flying off to Neverland with no wings and inadvertently leading the Darling family straight to a gang of pirates.

Sacred Cows and Hamburgers

Earlier this week, my company hosted an event for the Do One Thing campaign, which encourages individuals and organizations to do one thing for diversity and inclusion. A worthy goal, and the structure holds everyone accountable in a small and meaningful way.  One brief moment, however, mitigated the power of the event and is a poignant metaphor for our struggle for acceptance and understanding for mental illness.

One panelist concluded her comments by asking everyone to examine their latent stereotypes and prejudices, referring to them as “sacred cows,” an idiom for “something considered (perhaps unreasonably immune from question or criticism". According to Wikipedia, the term “is based on the popular understanding of the elevated place of cows in Hinduism, no matter how inconvenient,” and in my opinion is very non-culturally inclusive to begin with (why not call them “sacred Saturdays” – keeping Sabbath is far more “inconvenient” than revering cows). She decisively crossed the line, however, when she said that we should “make hamburgers” out of our sacred cows.

Horrible, No Good

Today I feel bad. I made a bad decision or two this weekend and I feel guilty, ashamed, and bad. It’s not just a horrible, no good, very bad day: when you’re managing a mental illness, every bad day can come with a paralyzing, tummy lurching fear that this day could be the start of something much worse.

Am I going to feel depressed all week? All month? All year? Am I going to stop working out and gain weight and withdraw from society? Is this going the feared bout of depression, looming on the horizon from which I do not recover? Will the fog ever lift? Will I ever be happy again?

For me, bad days are more than bad days. They are a trigger. They remind me of being depressed, of the trauma of self destruction, of the great tragedy in my life. I revert to attitudes and actions that bring scant comfort: I withdraw, I eat, I play defense. I act like a trauma survivor, less that last word.  I turn into a scared animal, cringing at a lifted hand.

Someday, I will act like a survivor. Someday, I will play offense: I will eat foods that make me feel healthy, see people who make me feel strong, and do activities that force me out of a stupor. Someday, bad days will not scare me: they will not snowball into flashbacks and fear and the horrible belief that the past has not disappeared. Someday I will not be afraid. Someday.

My Body, My Drugs

I am an intelligent human and my memory typically serves me all too well. I’m fastidious and detail oriented, as evidenced by the two, large white boards, one at work and one in my room, that chronicle my to-dos, trending thoughts, and schedules. Despite all this, I struggle to remember to take my daily medication.

I’ve tried setting alarms. I’ve tried carrying my medications everywhere I go. I’ve tried placing the bottles in my closet so that I have to look at them when I get dressed. I still manage to forget at an alarming rate, forcing myself to turn around on my way to work or take my medication hours late.

Why can’t I remember my medicine? My most recent theory is that I’m passive aggressively, subconsciously protesting my drug dependence. For I depend on these medications: without them, my life was harder, unhappier, less tenable. So despite the fact that their side effects can include weight gain and thyroid and kidney problems, to name a few, I take my three pills every day. Why is it called addiction when it’s a cigarette and medication when it comes from an orange hued bottle? I feel like I’m doing something intrinsically harmful to my body for the sake of my mind. There’s a profound disconnect between the person I want to be and the person who needs these medications, and, of course, there’s not.

First, Do No Harm

The New York Times broke a story yesterday asserting that “nearly one in seven elderly nursing home residents, nearly all of them with dementia, are given powerful antipsychotic drugs even though the medicines increase the risks of death and are not approved for such treatments”. A few other highlights from the article, and my thoughts, after the jump.

Just Me

On Thursday, I got some exciting news. The news made me feel. First I felt relieved, then I felt happy, and nervous, and terrified, and jubilant, and all sorts of things. A year ago, this would have been awful and uncomfortable. I would have worried about why I was feeling a certain way, whether it meant my medication was at the wrong level, whether I was headed for unsustainable highs or a crash. I wasn't able to trust any of my own feelings and emotions, and my world was volatile and uncomfortable if not stable and dull.

Born This Way

This post is inspired by a conversation I had driving to the airport this weekend. Someone asked me why anyone would pay $80-100 for a Glee concert ticket, to which I responded that I had in fact paid $107 for the privilege of attending a Glee concert and eagerly awaited my chance to do so in just a few weeks. For the ignorant in my readership base, Glee is a very popular musical comedy show on Fox, starring Lea Michele as a self centered high school student leading a band of misfits to unimaginable musical heights. On Glee's last episode, mental health was part of a major storyline.

Bunnies

I was sitting at work the other day when I received a mildly humorous email about my blog. I chuckled. A coworker, who is likely to turn into a friend, inquired about the source of my perceived pleasure. I told him that my sister wrote me a witty comment about my blog, and he responded by saying that I should monetize my blog using Google AdWords.


In a perfect world, I would have said, well, I would, but I'm worried that all the ads will be for medications because the blog is about mental health. If he was interested in the content of the blog, he would have asked more questions and made more comments, and if not, well, maybe someday he'd meet someone who is and pass it on. Msybe he reads my blog already and would have said a nice thing or two. But I was afraid, so I didn't discuss the ocntent of my blog. I didn't use this perfect opportunity to share something I'm proud of. Instead I laughed, my defensive laugh, and said, "well, I don't know. It's not like my blog is about bunnies."

This peron might know what my blog is about. I haven't made the blog a secret; I've shared it with individuals and on my Facebook page. I have already chosen to make this blog public, so why skirt around an issue, too polite and uncomfortable to address the elephant in the room? I don't know, but I think that's how a lot of conversations about mental health go.

Decisions

I am not good at making decisions. I am an endless loop; I will create circular logic patterns and ride them like genuinely terrifying roller coasters.

Now that I've learned, after an ongoing period of careful observation that I'm exceedingly proud of, to identify my moods, my confidence in my own decision making has unfortunately decreased. My depressed self doesn't feel confident making a decision on her own, without my "normal" self and my hypomanic self. My "normal" self tends to be paralyzed by indecision and wait for either my depressed or hypomanic self to come out and play. My hypomanic self wants to make every decision possible, act on it, and plan my life six or twelve or eighteen months out. I am an endless loop.

Coming Out

All week, I've kept a list of potential blog posts on my cell phone. I've gotten really excited thinking about my new project, and I have scribbled notes about the man I saw at San Francisco General today, the article about a "trend" of bipolar celebrities these days, the difficulty I have making decisions. There is so much to say about this illness, about the humor, the sadness, the small moments of triumph and despair that this albatross brings as it swings inexorably around your neck.

Then I read this blog post. The post explains how important anonymity is for someone blogging about his or her mental illness, and how a failure to protect your identity can adversely affect your work life and your personal relationships. Just like bipolar disorder. She compares mental illness to minority sexual orientation, but says the stigma is currently worse for the mentally ill in most situations.

This is something I've thought a lot about. There is heavy stuff to write about here: heavy feelings, heavy experiences, heavy stories. But sharing it lightens the load, because I know that if I had found a resource like this when I was first learning about living with this disease, it would have made my life very different. I remember the few times I've met someone with this diagnosis and how relieved I felt: not happy, not joyful, just relieved. Relief is such a sweet thing sometimes. My memory fhat feeling makes me want to share this blog with everyone I know, in case they know someone who might feel that way when they read it. Or maybe that's not why - maybe it's because I want to break the silence and because I need to share, because writing is what I do when I feel scared and alone and because writing is the only thing I can do that makes me feel like I can leave something in this world, something real and maybe even beautiful.

On the other hand, it's scary. Coming out is scary. People are ignorant, and these things are personal and hard. Do I want my coworkers to see this? My boss? A guy who might be thinking about asking me out? Why is it that it is less scary, and more liberating, to share this blog with strangers than with those closest to me?

These questions scare me. They make my tummy hurt and they leave me with a sense of loss, as though if I shut this down, if I don't share this blog, I'm losing something. Because I'm passionate about this blog, and this topic, and anyone and anything out there help me this illness. But that doesn't mean sharing is the right thing to do. Or does it?

There is no reason to suffer silently

As I previously discussed, Catherine Zeta Jones recenty sought treatment for her bipolar II disorder. This might be one People magazine that I actually buy outside of an airport. Excerpt:

"This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am one of them...If my revelation of having bipolar II has encouraged one person to seek help, then it is worth it. There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help."

This is particularly important because the faces of bipolar disorder painted by the media are after particularly frightening, and because there is a lot of speculation about celebrities that *might* be bipolar; for example, Charlie Sheen, who fundraised for a Canadian bipolar awareness organization despite denying that he is bipolar. Ms. Zeta Jones proves that you can be bipolar AND your own advocate, bipolar AND beautiful, bipolar AND successful, bipolar AND eloquent. Thank you.

Physical Symptoms: Catch-22

Since I was diagnosed, I've learned about a variety of physical symptoms that accompany my mental ones. Each time I experience one, I have to admit that I feel a tiny bit of relief. I'm a little relieved that I have evidence (as though my experiences aren't evidence enough) of my condition. I don't think those with mental illnesses are alone in feeling like this: I'm sure sufferers of migraines or other chronic illnesses sometimes feel frustrated that they "look just fine" even though their world is collapsing around them.

That being said, here are a few physical symptoms of depression that I find particularly interesting. Albert Einstein said that if you cannot explain something simply, you do not understand it well enough; let it be very clear that the fact that I can explain some of these things briefly do not mean I understand them well.

Suicide and Economic Downturns

Mental illness, behavioral economics, and the New York Times are all fascinating topics to me. So when the NYT ran this article, which shows evidence that suicide rates are correlated with business cycles. Excerpt from the article:

"To investigate the effect of business cycles, the researchers calculated the average rate during periods when the economy contracted and compared it with the average during the years leading to downturns. The sharpest increase occurred at the start of the Great Depression, when rates jumped 23 percent — to 22.1 in 1932, from 18.0 in 1928. The study found smaller bumps during the oil crisis of the early 1970s and the double-dip recession of the early 1980s, among other economic troughs.

The suicide rate generally fell during periods of economic expansion, with some exceptions. Rates among people in their 30s and 40s went up during the booming 1960s and actually decreased among the elderly in the severe recession of the mid-1970s.

Cultural factors played a role, the authors argue. “The social unrest and tumult of the 1960s may have added to young people’s mental stress and therefore contributed to their continually rising suicide rates,” they wrote. “For the elderly groups, the rapid increase in Social Security benefits in the late 1960s may have provided a safety net in hard times.”"

The Secret

One of the scariest things about mental illness is that it's a Big Secret. People tend to discuss mental illness when it manifests itself in paricularly scary ways: homeless people chasing you on the San Francisco sidewalk, successful, highly functional grown ups taking their lives when the pain is too great. The day to day side of the mental illness, the humors, the small tragedies, the ironies, are Big Secrets (and also, what I hope to capture in this blog).

Last week, something happened to expose my Big Secret at work.

Thanks to my celebrity gossip addiction, I just learned that Catherine Zeta Jones briefly checked herself into a mental health care facility to treat her bipolar II disorder. I also learned that bipolar II disorder affects 6M Americans, or translates to a lifetime prevalence of 0.5-1% (thank you Wikipedia). First, I think that it is incredibly brave of Zeta-Jones and her family to publicly explain her need for treatment - an article like this can do more to demystify and destigmatize mental illness than countless studies, academic articles, et cetera. Catherine Zeta Jones is beautiful, poised, talented, successful... and bipolar? Stick that in your pipe. Secondly, any time someone seeks treatment voluntarily, they display courage and emotional integrity beyond words. Second, I was inspired by Zeta-Jones to evaluate my own need for some "treatment". When you have ample amounts of money and it's close confidante, time, you have the luxury of stopping your life, at a moment's notice, to take a break from reality (Charlie Sheen), become a fairly routine criminal (Lindsay Lohan), or take care of yourself. As a normal person, I don't get to shut my life down when I feel that my symptoms are getting the best of me, but it's no less important to recognize when my life needs to come second to a little break. This week was the third in a row that I felt I was running on empty and my symptoms were catching up, so I did something new and scary to me: I shut down the "non-critical" elements of my life. I focused on sleeping, working, and taking basic care of myself, and I spent the rest of my time doing nothing. And boy, did I need it. Maybe I have something in common with Catherine Zeta Jones... (other than our devasting good looks).

Upside

Is there an upside to mental illness? This question stems from one that I asked my doctor a few months ago. I asked, "Don't you think that if I could be Anushka, but not be bipolar," I would be an infinitely better person? He smiled benevolently and rejected the hypothesis. If I weren't bipolar, he said, I couldn't be Anushka. When you have the flu, it's quite obvious that you want, need to get better. If you have cancer, it's quite clear you'd rather not have the cancer, and those these illnesses change you, define you, they are not literally part of your brain chemistry. When I had a serious physical illness a few years ago, it changed me, the way that I look at the world, but it was not part of my core identity. With mental illness, it's hard to piece those things apart: Am I "naturally" (sans illness) an enthusiastic person? How enthusiastic am I? Am I social? Impulsive? Sexy? Would I "naturally" have periods of extreme introspection and melancholy? Many do! But how often would I have mine? What would they look like? It's nearly impossible to piece my identity as a bipolar patient away from my identity as a human, just as it's frustratingly difficult to piece symptoms from "normal" twentysomething feelings and behavior. Like sexuality and athleticism, it's a spectrum, and like the latter, it's hard to tell what could and could not be accomplished without certain enhancements. Is there a reason to piece these things apart, to "know" what you'd be like? For someone as introspective as I am, there's a lot of guilt, confusion, and pain around the ways that I've acted and treated people in the past, and there's also a tremendous desire to both explain it away due to an emerging diagnosis and not allow myself to be defined by said diagnosis. So it's a line that the mind is naturally drawn to, but it's constantly shifting. So would I rather not be bipolar? I don't know, and that's a source of guilt, shame, and wonderment. Who doesn't wish their illness away, or at least, isn't sure if she does? Right - someone's whose illness is embedded within their behaviors, their personality, even their soul.

The Same Reasons, or Why I've Started this Blog

Yesterday in my chemistry class, a woman in my class shocked. She's a pharmacist, and I was telling her about my plans to write about lithium for our independent projects in class. She seemed impressed by the amount I already knew about lithium and displayed no emotion when I told her (it's important not to lie about these things, at least my "how to survive" rulebook) that I take it. She said, "it's inspirational that someone can be as successful as you are with this illness". We got to talking about mental health, and my reasons for wanting to be a psychiatrist. If it was so hard for me to make it through what I went through over the past few years, how hard must it be for those who do not have the safety network, the financial security, the physical health, the happy accidents of birth and family that I have? And so on. She listened intently. When I asked her why she wanted to be a doctor, she looked me dead in the eye and said, "The exact same reason as you." This is the second time in the past three months when, after disclosing my illness, I've found that a colleague or peer shares my diagnosis. Either I'm a magnet for bipolar people or there are more of us than it feels like as we hide our episodes from our bosses and watch our pharmacists struggle not to display any emotions (confusion, pity) when we fill our prescriptions (is this really for you?). As the woman in chemistry class pointed out, "it's because this illness isn't like cancer: you always have it and you don't get better or worse". So instead of better or worse, I'm writing this blog. I'll share some very brief short stories on the topic of mental illness, my own observations of mental diagnoses and our society, and hopefully links to other people who are writing and thinking about these things in much more thoughtful ways. Despite the somewhat upbeat tone I hope this blog will take, it's a risky effort for me. It's scary to speak so openly about these things, but that's the goal. Because for better or worse, my illness is here to stay. And so am I.